Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-16-Speech-3-279"
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"en.20051116.20.3-279"2
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".
Mr President, I will do my best. Today – or rather tomorrow, in fact – we face a very tricky decision. We will be voting in favour of rejecting the Commission proposal, but I, for one, will do so reluctantly. We in this Parliament have a duty to contribute to the legislative process and we will be rejecting the proposal tomorrow without giving an indication as to how things should be done instead. That is, to my mind, a missed opportunity. It appears that all parties had grievances. Some thought the proposal was going too far, while others felt it did not go anything like far enough.
We ought, though, to decide one way or another. The Commission would also have something to use as a basis if it tables a fresh proposal to implement the international treaty. I must, of course, also say a word about the muskrats. Needless to say, the Dutch dikes must be protected. We cannot promote animal welfare that is at the expense of our safety. I am not all that keen on drowning sets, though, and I would urge you as yet to review the trapping of muskrats and the methods used for it.
To my mind, the following conditions must certainly be met before drowning sets can be installed. First of all, we must have reached plague proportions and, with it, damage to the dikes. This damage is evident in a number of locations in the Netherlands, namely in Frisia and South Holland, but in Brabant, this damage is far less pronounced. The second condition is that the drowning set is only to be used if prevention has proved ineffective or is impossible to implement, and the third condition is if no animal-friendly alternatives are available. Whilst it is disappointing that Europe will not table a workable directive in the short term, it is not the end of the debate.
Neither should this, to my mind, spell the painful end of muskrats. For the time being, it is up to the Member States to take their own measures. I would therefore urge you to thrash out alternatives and reduce the animal suffering to a minimum. Rejecting this directive should not be an excuse in the Netherlands not to enter into the debate of muskrat control, and while I am on the subject, I should like to thank Mrs Scheele for triggering an enormous discussion, which we would not have had without her amendment. So let us therefore see the present situation in a positive light and do something that this House has not yet done by seizing the chance to make prevention a priority, developing the necessary alternatives, so that the Netherlands can make an important contribution to a fresh legislative proposal."@en1
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